The 10 Best New Shows Of 2012 Include Girls, Midwives And A Scandal

Every major network listens to hundreds of television pitches each year. A small percentage of those receive a script order, a small percentage of those receive a pilot order, a small percentage of those actually get picked up, and hilariously, an overwhelming majority of those are still not very good. Most new television programs barely make it the full season let alone get picked up for another go around. Fortunately, there are always a dozen or so that somehow navigate through all of those trappings and actually work. This list is a celebration of those television programs.

The following list contains ten shows that premiered in 2012. Some of them are already among the best shows on TV. Others have shown enough snippets of incredible promise to make more astute viewers tune in for the sake of what the show could become. TV Blend stands behind every single one, and while there’s no way to tell where they might go from here, what we do know is that each of their outputs over the past year was damn good.

Here are TV Blend’s best new shows of 2012…

Longmire

There’s not a ton of new television fodder set to air during any given summer months. Thus, creating a brand new procedural set in the wide and open landscapes of Wyoming and featuring a conflicted sheriff returning to the job after months of drunken mourning following the death of his wife was a welcome addition to A&E’s normally reality-heavy lineup in 2012. Signing on Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff, Smallville’s Cassidy Freeman, and veteran actor Lou Diamond Phillips was also a stroke of genius, and probably helped lead to Longmire’s summer success on the air.

Detective Walt Longmire (Robert Taylor) is legitimately old school, and the show often focuses on guns, women, and Reservation politics. Add a procedural format, and you get a show that somewhat skews to older viewers but still has enough punch to pop up on this list as one of 2012’s best new series. The veritable tug of war constantly going on between the Res police and the Sheriff’s department also adds a little something extra to the procedural format, as Native American politics often get in the way of investigations and those living on the Reservation prefer to keep their mouths clammed shut. Longmire may not have the budget that some of its cable counterparts have, but it is still a welcome addition to the summer lineup, and speaks highly of the new direction A&E has been working to go in.